


life and death (and the importance of both)

by WattStalf



Series: one and one makes two (but three and four can come along too) [2]
Category: Baccano!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, F/M, Polyamory, Sedoretu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-21
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2020-06-03 16:16:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19467562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WattStalf/pseuds/WattStalf
Summary: This is...my favorite part.





	life and death (and the importance of both)

**Author's Note:**

> I guess I'm still not done with these four even after this one, so expect a part from Leila's POV someday, and then Who's after that.

Leila is Ladd’s best friend, as strained as that friendship may have come after events of their past, and now that he is trying to rekindle things with her and Who, Lua is brought into the mix as well. Lua, personally, couldn’t care less if their relationship had four people or if she and Ladd were all alone besides each other, just as long as her life ends the way Ladd promises it will.

She doesn’t know what Leila or Who think about things, about her unique relationship with Ladd. He does all the talking before she is ever introduced to them, and by then, they know everything well enough to not comment one way or the other when the topic is brought up. She is supposed to grow closer to them, if this is going to work out, but Lua doesn’t care if it works out or not, at least where she’s concerned. It’s what Ladd wants, and he is going to give her what she wants (someday), so as long as things work out for him, then that’s all that really matters.

Becoming friends with Who, and finding a strong enough connection with Leila to match what she has with Ladd...while the former might be doable, to some extent, the latter is more than likely impossible. Lua has only ever been in love with the idea of death; she only came to love Ladd because he is the closest thing to a personification that she has ever met. Leila is brash and vibrant, just like Ladd, but that is where their similarities end, in Lua’s opinion.

She’s heard the story of Leila’s nearly fatal injury, the miracle of her survival and complete recovery, and maybe it’s a little bit of a reach to think this, but Lua begins to see Leila as more of a personification of life, something that she has very little interest in. But then, she’s alive whether she wants to be or not; likewise, she’s saddled with Leila, whether she wants to be or not, and in that way, it’s fitting.

The four of them spend more time together once Ladd decides that’s what he wants, and she can see exactly why he likes Who, and why the two of them are close. Who is a coward, but that makes him just the right amount of cautious, and Ladd tends to latch onto people with just the right amount of fear. Maybe Who was even a precedent for this, considering how long they’ve known each other. Maybe Ladd just has a type, when it comes to men.

If he has a type in women, Lua isn’t sure what it is, or if she would fit it, or, if she does, if there are even any others like her out there, or she’s a special case and Ladd is lucky to have found the one to suit his type.

As for Leila, they seem to butt heads more often than not, but Ladd did warn her that she was bossy, that she’s always been bossy, and that he used to take it from her but doesn’t anymore. Now, they bicker nearly every time they talk, but neither seem to have any issue with that. If anything, Lua would say that Ladd is happier with Who and Leila around, and she is almost jealous, but not quite.

Their relationship is different, and that’s all there is to it.

~X~

The four of them spend more time together, but Lua still keeps to herself, and doesn’t work much on improving her relationships with the other two. Who isn’t particularly hard to get along with, but she finds Leila a bit daunting, what with the implication of what their relationship is supposed to become. She never considered falling in love before she met Ladd, and the concept is still foreign to her, so, needless to say, it’s a lot of pressure.

She’s sure that Ladd put Leila up to it, when the other woman sits down near her while she’s working on a puzzle. As always, Lua is minding her business while the others get up to whatever they’re getting up to. She doesn’t even look up as Leila sits down and asks, “Is it alright if I watch you?”

Lua looks up briefly to nod, then gets back to it. They haven’t spent much time with just the two of them, and she wonders what Ladd and Who are up to. As if reading her mind, Leila says, “The guys went out to do god knows what. Ladd had some idea that had Who looking utterly terrified, but he still ended up getting dragged along for the ride. He said I could look after you for the time being.”

“Ladd did?”

Leila laughs to herself. “Like he thinks I’m qualified to protect you or something. Well...knowing how he is now, he probably wants me to be.”

“He used to think about protecting you,” she says, without realizing why she’s saying it. It might be the longest sentence she’s said directly to Leila, and definitely the most personal.

Leila wrinkles her nose and says, “You don’t have to tell  _ me _ that. I don’t know when he got that idea in his head, but after we ran away...it wasn’t hard to tell that’s why he started acting different. Like he thought he was responsible, like he thought I couldn’t take care of myself.”

Now Lua doesn’t know what to say, and she doesn’t know why she brought it up in the first place. Ladd is working to bury that part of the past, to move on, so there’s no point in her talking to Leila about it now. But, then, what should she talk to Leila about? Why does she feel obligated to talk, when she barely speaks to begin with?

Leila doesn’t seem to struggle to fill the silence, though, and asks, “So, what’s up with the blank pieces?”

“Hm?”

“Do you not like the kind with the pictures on them?”

“It’s not that,” she says. It’s not the first time she’s heard this.

“Well, it must be a lot harder. I guess you like the challenge?”

“Sort of.” It’s hard to explain what first drew her to entirely white puzzles, hard to convey the tranquility they represented to her, the emptiness that resonated with her, and, yes, the challenge they presented. If the picture already exists, it takes her no time at all to assemble them, but these actually occupy her for quite a while, and provide more entertainment as a result.

“It looks like you’re almost done with that one,” Leila observes. “Sorry, does me talking distract you?”

“Not at all. Ladd can never keep quiet while he watches me.”

“That’s not surprising,” she says with a laugh.

There is more to her fascination with plain jigsaw puzzles than just the tranquility and the emptiness. Sometime after she started solving them, she realized that she felt incomplete, when she was done. The blank image was just how she wanted it to be, it was just as empty as she felt, and yet it felt incomplete. But solving puzzles with images on them never did any good for her, so that is when she starts painting them after they’re done.

She isn’t sure what it means that she felt so compelled to fill that emptiness herself, nor had she thought of herself as particularly artistically inclined beforehand, but the painting is as necessary a step in the process as the solving.

When she finishes this one, she goes to get her paints, noticing that Leila is watching her intently. As she starts to set up for that, Leila asks, “Are you gonna paint a picture on it now?” Lua nods, and she grins. “Well, that sounds like a fun extra step! I guess that’s part of why you do the blank ones too!”

Next comes the part that Lua doesn’t particularly like to show to people. Ladd understood it immediately, even applying a meaning to it that she hadn’t thought of before, but Lua has always done it, from the first picture that she painted. Even after feeling compelled to fill the blank space, she felt even more compelled to destroy what she had created; in a way, that’s her favorite part. In a way, everything else is just lengthy buildup to the climax.

Leila admires the landscape she paints, and Lua patiently waits for it to dry enough to be able to touch. While they wait, she asks her, “So, you and Ladd...is it because he says he’s going to kill you?”

Lua is surprised to hear her ask such a personal question, completely out of context, but then, her remark about Ladd before fell into the same category, so maybe it’s fair. “That’s part of it,” she agrees, “but I do love him.” It’s true that she does; there are a lot of things about him that she never expected to fall for, but she finds even his loudness endearing. Maybe it’s true what they say about opposites. In that case, she was bound to end up with someone loud, to fill all of her silences.

“I see. Well, that’s good...I can’t really say I understand you guys, but Ladd’s always been all over the place.” Leila sighs. “Honestly, it’s a miracle he found someone like you, and a miracle Who was willing to wait for him while he had his head up his ass.”

Lua doesn’t know what to say to that, so she stares at her painting. It’s still not dry, but it would take too long for her to wait until it was fully dry. Usually, she waits until a portion of it is dry before she destroys it, so that she doesn’t get paint all over herself, but she is never able to wait until dries completely, to avoid getting paint on her at all. Rather than waiting for it to get to that point, and rather than replying to Leila, she picks it up.

“Huh? What are you doing?”

“This is...my favorite part.” She can’t help but smile as she destroys all of her work. Every piece she put into place and every stroke of her brush is all undone in a motion so quick that it makes the time she spent on it seem like a waste. She loves it, and she nearly forgets Leila is there, until there’s a pile of crumpled pieces on the table, and paint caked to her hands.

“So you do all that to…” Leila trails off, unable to put her observation into words. Lua rises to wash her hands, and the other woman follows her, silent now. Even after scrubbing for some time, she isn’t able to get all of the paint off, and Leila still hasn’t said anything else.

“What do you think?” Lua surprises herself with how much she wants to know.

“You and Ladd suit each other,” Leila replies, and she’s pleased to hear it, but somehow, she wishes that there were more. “I don’t really get it, but I get what he sees in you.”

“But what do you think?” she repeats, and Leila thinks about it for a moment.

“I think you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met,” she finally replies, “and I think I want to get it, eventually. If I can.”

Lua has compared Leila to life in the past, and considered that something she has no interest in, but as her interest in Leila begins to grow, she has to reconsider that entirely. She has always been in love with the idea of death, and fell in love with Ladd because he represented that to her, but she still has a long wait until he actually kills her. In the meantime, there’s nothing wrong with her learning to love her life; in fact, she thinks that might be what Ladd wants for her.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're interested in my writing updates, please follow my fanfiction twitter @WattStalf  
> I'll follow back so long as you don't post anything hateful!


End file.
